


Spinlock

by JanuaryBlue



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Also architecture/language/magic/ancient civilization nerds, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amaurot (Final Fantasy XIV), Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Character Death, Depression, F/F, F/M, Manipulation, Multi, Other, POV Second Person, Tempering (Final Fantasy XIV), Warrior of Light Is The 14th Convocation Member (Final Fantasy XIV), dark themes, death by suffocation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23954833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanuaryBlue/pseuds/JanuaryBlue
Summary: Hydaelyn strikes true, and all of reality is Sundered; all but one soul.Legends rise up around you. Stories. Stories about a woman who can grant wishes, a wise man who knows everything, a great mage with unparalleled power, about a witch, an angel, a god. You don’t hear Hydaelyn’s name or Zodiark’s. It’s all well enough.Countless lifetimes come to pass. They’re countless because you don’t bother to number them. What would be the point? What is there to wait for,now?What could possibly be left?
Relationships: Elidibus/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Igeyorhm/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Lahabrea/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Nabriales/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58
Collections: May-U Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Prologue

The first time was the hardest. The first one of them.

They don’t know. None of them do. They don’t know _anything,_ remember _anything –_

And still you see them. Watching the shadows. Gazing, wide-eyed, at the moon. Elidibus gathers and preaches and you can tell he will gather together a following, a cult, if he is allowed to continue. There is no telling how much _he_ knows, if Zodiark can still speak to him, if being the heart allowed him to retain more than the others.

But they are His. As they once were. They are drawn to Him, drawn to His service, they will cobble together whatever they can, reach out with grasping, sundered hands to pull Him from His prison. This cannot be allowed.

…Just the once. Just one time, She told you, and they would be born anew, their souls washed clean by the stream of life, just as it would have been in Amaurot. Just as it would have been…

It’s not too unlike how it was. You’d found Hades again, told him who he was to you, and he’s accepted you easily. Too easily; you’d hoped it was because he recognized you, but every night you’d known him you’d caught him, staring up at the sky.

It might be romantic if he hadn’t seemed to forget you were even in the area. His eyes, unblinking, at the spot of white in a sea of blackness, a strange expression overtaking his features. You feel his aether, tiny and feeble as it is, curl and coil, as it to lash out, but he’s not the power to do so.

He's not the power to do so, now. Not the memories. How long will he live? How much will he remember, will the others remember? How will that knowledge empower them, enable them? What will they _do_ with it?

This world, Hydaelyn tells you, cannot afford to find out. The Convocation must not be suffered to rise again, enthralled as they are, with what knowledge their minds might contain. 

You sit there with a hand curled in your husband’s hair as you hold the pillow firmly over his face. He doesn’t stir. Doesn’t even struggle.

He’s so beautiful, your Hades. Even so sundered, so _small_ – oh, he is _so_ small like this, such a precious, fragile thing, a treasure; you had warped your shape so much to meet him, to be with him.

Under the pillow you can imagine those eyes, bright and golden. Faintly violet lips, always soft and tender to the touch. The hollowed angles of his cheeks that never seemed quite so sharp pressed into your face, your neck, your chest, your –

The way he smiled with your slick on his lips. Kissed you and held you as he drifted off to sleep. How you had to squirm out of his grasp, the warmest embrace you’d ever known, that small feeling of being _home_ in this world so, _so_ wrong.

The pillow is shaking. You keep it on him. In a few more minutes it should be certain. Why won’t it stop shaking? Your hands are shaking. Arms tired, in pain.

His death, you hope, is painless. Your cheeks are wet. His hands lie still at his sides, unable to reach out to dry them.

He would want to. The others try, when they see you later, when they learn he is dead.

The first time is the hardest. But the next twelve are not any easier.


	2. Wait

Mortal lifetime after mortal lifetime, you wander the earth. Your original form you'd long since abandoned, having warped it - compressed it - just to walk openly among the sundered Convocation (before you killed them). 

And with them gone and dead and forgotten by all but you, you'd not known what to do. And then you’d seen them.

Them. These people. You don’t know who they were, who they would have been, in Amaurot – you cannot imagine _anyone_ like this having been in Amaurot. There are no words for it. Like frightened beasts, they lash out at one another, and you, when you try to help. They lie and they scheme and they _fight,_ angry and hateful. However hard you try they refuse to see the other side, refuse to show sympathy for anyone but their own.

_Their own._ It made so little sense to you, and it still does, how they can look upon their fellow man with such hate. Do they not know the ones they call enemies are humans, still? People with hopes and dreams, people who have made promises and struggle helplessly through life just as they do?

When you tell one of them that, they laugh in your face. _We’re all struggling,_ they tell you, clicking their tongue at a being several thousand years their elder as though you are a naïve child, _why should we suffer more so they can suffer less?_

You watch them weigh lives and limbs, blood and children, suffering and starvation against – against _things._ Material things. Gold and metal, resources and – and _weapons._ You watch collectives rise among them, not with the intention of helping the common good, but to empower and glorify an individual or a group of individuals at the expense of others.

And people follow it, they cheer and praise and slave away for kings and tyrants and all other manner of authority that cares not for any common interest. They thank the people who send their children off to _die._

To _die._ They go off and they _kill each other._ In battlefields for causes, as though some cause is worth the handfuls of precious years they have on this earth, or in the streets like rats, murdered for some pretty metals.

You don’t know them. You don’t know what to do with them. You want to go home, and your home is _gone,_ and you’re alone, all alone, with these – with these _things._ These creatures that only vaguely resemble the mankind you once lived among, who show none of the kindness or intellect or compassion that you had come to associate with the word _humanity._

It's hard to find them, now. You should have expected this. You should have known it would be like this.

The sight had never been your strong suit; even if you’d honed it well, the skill that Hades and Hythlodaeus had possessed was an innate, inborn talent; not something you could have trained for. Still you try.

They have to be here. They _have_ to be. She promised you. Alive, somewhere – reborn. Unbeholden to Zodiark.

They are here, and you do find them. But you should have known, when you did it you should have _realized_ –

You reach out; she shies away. An approach in a tavern, a casual, gentle setting, calling out to him in the softest of voices; he jerks away from you as if he’s been burned. One after another you meet throughout the years. You think you meet.

Ironic, now, that you’ve found a way to recognize them. That instinctive flinch, a wince that went all the way down to the soul. The natural reaction of one who had been betrayed in the deepest of ways, by their most trusted and treasured companion.

A man with golden eyes that gleam in the sunlight (like that metal these mortal creatures treasure so – oh, you would lavish _mountains_ of it upon him, if only he asked, you would love him for all his tiny and ephemeral life, if only-) and they widen, baring more and more of the whites, he retreats, steps back once, and then again.

When he speaks his voice sounds nothing like him, and yet you can _hear_ (in the faintest of echoes, a sound in the back of your mind) the one you love… demanding in wavering tones, _Who are you,_ and _Why have you come here, What do you want from me?_

You _know_ how they are – how they’ve been to you – and yet – and yet –

It’s been long, it’s been so, so long. You can’t remember anymore, how it felt to have his arms around you, how it felt to fall asleep enveloped by warmth. Sweet and precious, treasured and held, against bare skin and hot flesh, someone _next to you,_ someone to awaken to and sleep besides.

His eyes are familiar, his voice makes you remember him. So you tell him the truth, you say your piece, somehow devoid completely of hope that he will believe it. _I am someone you knew in another life. I have come here to find you. I want you to be happy._

It is instantly plain which thing he finds the least believable. He tells you to leave, if that’s what you want, because that’s what would make him happy. You can see in those eyes he doesn’t trust you. Those familiar eyes. How do you recognize something you’ve never seen? He’d always trusted you.

You leave but you stay. You stay, lurking in the corners, in the shadows of his life. When his crops wither, they are miraculously renewed. When skirmishes approach the town, their forces are redirected. When his plow is broken he finds it repaired the next morning, and you are sure you catch those golden eyes glinting with suspicion, darting around as to catch the source of this suspicious assistance.

In whatever parts of his life are lacking, you provide. You find him friends, you find him fortune, you find him learning and entertainment, even – fetching it all for him or making arrangements or otherwise dragging good fortune to his doorstep and leaving it there without so much as a word.

When he finds a woman to wed, you watch in silence. He’d asked you to leave. He’d trusted you.

He comes deeply, deathly ill, so much that his wife is fraught with worry and his children wail nigh constantly – you are there. In the shadows. You wait until she falls asleep at his side, and then you approach, hands filled with healing magic, and he wakes a new man. He holds his children and kisses his wife and you see true tears in his eyes, for this miracle.

Even when you let yourself be caught, the next day, in the shadow of his vision, you don’t see the familiarity you’re looking for. For all he’s nothing to fear from you his eyes narrow in intent, his posture stiffens, you see him swallow, at a distance.

The man who had shared your soul in lifetimes past looks at you like he is afraid you will ask him to return all his good fortune and more. Like you’ll follow him into his home and smother his wife and children while he sleeps.

He doesn’t want you. He’ll never want you. You killed him.

You leave, like he asked you to. Like he said would make him happy. You don’t hear from him, after that.

And it’s _okay._ For all that you wonder, what’s become of him, you start realize, in your heart of hearts, that you don’t like these mortals. You can’t deal with them, you can’t deal with these people. They’re so _frustrating._ You try to help them, you try and try and try and try and for all the progress you make it never seems to be good enough.

They need you to do this, they need you to get that for them, someone is hurt, someone needs help, over and over and over again they need you in this way or another. No matter how much you show them, teach them better ways, lead by example, nothing stays with them, nothing _sticks_ except that **you** are their ultimate solution.

Some number of them do take your teachings to heart, students bright-eyed and open hearted, eager to learn and willing to help. Those are the worst. They look up to you as a paragon and mentor, as a figure to be respected and esteemed, someone whose superiority is without question.

And they are right. Of course they are. You’re millennia old. The wisest of their sages are all still _children_ in the eyes of your people, they’re _children,_ so young and foolish and fumbling and dying of old age as their bodies rotted around them.

You couldn’t deal with it. Couldn’t deal with them. You’d taught some few great magicians or scholars to go out into the world and better their fellow man, some souls in this world who were able to latch on to greater ways of thinking. Then you sent them on your way and left.

It had never been this hard, sleeping alone. Now it seems this is all you do. You build yourself some grandiose and secluded dwelling and stay there. You sleep and you sleep and you _sleep._ Every day feels as if you are waiting to go to bed.

It’s not the sleeping alone that’s bad, really. It’s the _living_ alone.

Day in, day out. You wake up for no reason and you stand up. Magick yourself up a meal. It doesn’t taste like anything. Maybe it’s from a lack of memory, or talent. Lahabrea had told you there was a trick to it, once. Shared the secret with you at the very top of the Achora Heights, where you could look over most of the city.

He liked to watch the sun go down past the buildings – you couldn’t watch the sun _set_ but the light went straight through the tall buildings, streaming through glass and towers, spiraling structures that he liked to call frivolous from time to time. You think that you’d gotten him to admit how much he liked it, one day.

How large would they have been, compared to the surrounding mountains? There’s no way to tell. The city is in ruins, now. A seaside nation-state that had not been lived in for millennia. Crumbling slowly into the ocean – to you, it had felt like every day you woke up a new building had fallen.

You’d run away from Amaurot ages ago. At first, after you had laid the fourteen of them to rest, you’d retreated home, tried to make your life there. The one place in the world where you could be yourself, _in_ yourself, exist naturally in your own shape.

Everything in the world was too _small._ It was so strange, to return there, to walk through familiar doorways and paths, and think it _large._ You took your true form once again but the feeling never went away. How could it?

How could the city ever feel anything but too large, larger than life, enormous and towering, when there was no one else in it?

It was empty. So, _so_ empty. Amaurot had never been so, not in its entire existence; even after those dark and terrible days leading up to the Doom. Citizens going about their business, one or another city project blocking the roads, always some crowd or another that dwelt about and complained about the construction.

And then empty, laid bare for the inspection of any passerby. Wide walkways well decorated and designed, plants and décor lining the streets. Tasteful lamps hung still lit up – it might have been… Igeyorhm’s concept? Lahabrea’s? Who knew, at this point. There was no one to tell you.

The lamps drew heat constantly from the surrounding air to sustain their luminescence. They would shine until the world was so cold no living thing survived.

Not that anyone living could see them. Vast, towering structures, level after level of interweaving paths. Like a child’s toy at an enormous scale, block by elegant, carefully crafted block, immaculately clean and open and empty and untouched by human presence entirely.

And then came time. The slow march of time lapped away at the city you had found yourself persisting in, the acidity in the air, the ocean waves on the bedrock, the touch of storm and hail on tight, high spires.

It had never occurred to you to take preventative measures. Why would it? The city’s foundations would last for eons.

And suddenly you’d woken up to see the capitol sinking, one pillar after another crumbling before the structure’s awesome weight. One structure had needed maintenance, and then another; completely different kinds of architecture and materials. Missing panels and windows and eventually entire segments of buildings that always seemed _different_ when you tried to replace it, repair it.

It always seemed wrong. It had seemed wrong from the beginning, when you went to live there, and when the city started to fall apart it had felt like living in a corpse. Stitching off fallen limbs to a dead, immobile, uncaring _thing_ that would never know true life.

There’s no telling how decrepit it’s become, after so much more time. It hurts to even think about.

Not a lot hurts, anymore. There’s not a lot that feels like anything at all. You watch the scenery from your created dwelling sometimes and wonder, but that’s all. The surroundings are always the same. There’s no life of magic left in it, anymore. Everything seems so much _smaller._

It shouldn’t. You’re smaller now, too. Changed yourself to fit this new world. To not scare them. To be with them.

More the fool, you, for thinking there any of them might be worth your company. Even the best among them will not last. Could never look upon you as an equal. You wake up and you exist and you go to sleep. You wake up again and day after day you find yourself still existing.

You go to sleep. Your dreams are as empty as Amaurot’s streets, as your home with no paintings or portraits, no concept lattices or trinkets or fond mementos, no odd creation or gift from a colleague or a million other worthless things that made life worthwhile.

Legends rise up about you. Stories. Stories about a woman who can grant wishes, a wise man who knows everything, a great mage with unparalleled power, aout a witch, an angel, a _god._ You don’t hear Hydaelyn’s name or Zodiark’s. It’s all well enough.

Countless lifetimes come to pass. They’re countless because you don’t bother to number them. What would be the point?

More and more, sleep seems like the answer. Maybe one day you’ll dream of them. If you could see, if you could just _see_ –

None of them ever do come to you, not even in your dreams.

Until they do.


	3. The Twelve

Outside a great hall relatively paltry to his usual accommodations, a man who once held the title Lahabrea in a relatively recent life raises his voice.

“Nald’Thal,” He says, “Are you quite finished floundering by the entryway? We’ve duties to attend. The sooner we attend to this matter the sooner we may leave.”

His companion, a man possessed even in this life of an uncanny vision – once the holder of the seat of Emet-Selch – responds with annoyance. “If you held so little interest, why did you come at all?”

A shiver runs through the both of them as the woman called Halone passes by. A number of lives ago, she had been Igeyorhm.

“I’ve no interest in their wild tales of a witch in the woods or some other variety of monster or god or whatever other being these peasants wish to dream up for themselves. But near the shores, further out against the peninsula, I’ve been investigating records that indicate some remarkable ruins – the size described in Gerun’s texts boggles the mind.”

“And how is that so different from what we are doing now? Looking into rumors?”

There’s no life at all, no fraction of his soul, in which Lahabrea would not have instantly balked. “ _How?_ There is the matter of _factual evidence,_ for one – ”

“Yes, I suppose just seeing a thing with one’s own eyes can’t possibly be evidence, you’d have to have… oh, at least five or so great sages who refer in the most profound and least specific of terms to some abstract notion or another which you decide contains some commonality... Rhalgr, are you listening?”

Lahabrea turns in the middle of his companion’s musing, following where Igeyorhm had passed through with a quick stride which Emet-Selch shortly follows. “Come now, you know I speak the truth.”

“Whatever truth pleases you,” Lahabrea shoots back, gathering before a sturdy chair at the end of the room. Not so much a throne as a resting place, and a comfortable one, for the elder who sat there.

“My thanks for visiting our humble abode, great scholars.” The old man stands as soon as the last of the Twelve shuffle in, supporting most of his weight on a long cane, “I know the our Lord Archon has summoned you, to seek out the mage dwelling in these parts and put an end to their trickery.”

“Yes, I know that already,” Lahabrea says, disdain written all over his face, “And you know that we know that, otherwise we’d not have come at all. The Lord’s court told us you were the ones who’d had the most contact with this mage, and you must know this as well, so you must know that your task now is to tell us all that you know.”

“You are lord Rhalgr, yes?” The old man bows his head, a gesture which Lahabrea does not heed in the slightest.

“Where might we find this witch? In which direction of the surrounding woods? Where was the last known sighting?” He presses. The remaining Twelve around him do not quite stare; some of them are more used to his tirades than others, but he asks the pertinent questions, as always.

“Brilliant plan,” Emet-Selch interjects, stepping forward and stirring the others into unrest, “Let us seek out this mage we know naught of and assault – what, the first suspicious individual we run into?”

Lahabrea balks, scowls, but permits him to continue, addressing the elder, “What can you tell us of them? A man or a woman? Any identifying attributes, what magic they use, if we should expect them to be immediately aggressive or in disguise?”

The man who calls out then, Althyk, in a past life, had been Nabriales.

Also adjacent to his past life, he immediately derides Lahabrea. “Mayhap if you had _been here_ moments earlier, when he had been speaking to the rest of us, you would have heard. If you do not mind, Rhalgr, Nald’Thal, there are some of us who are interested in actually _completing_ the task at hand.”

Emet-Selch glances between the elder and Igeyorhm, uncertain.

It is Azeyma, formerly Emmerololth, who speaks up. “In various areas of the surrounding woods, some further than others, there have been incidents which may be connected to the one we seek. The elder had been collecting these reports and we had thought to divide the seeking amongst ourselves.”

A difficult plan to oppose, given the vast nature of the surroundings. “And for our _other_ questions?” Emet-Selch shoots Nabriales a pointed look.

Igeyorhm responds, “Reports contradict each other. Some people claim to have met a man, others swear they encountered a woman. There are no accounts of direct violence on the part of this mysterious mage, but individuals, merchants, and other parties have gone missing in the closest trading route. The duration and frequency of these incidents suggest that our target is based somewhere in the wider area, no further than the mountains.”

There’s a nasal scoff that could only come from one man. “If you wish to play nursemaid and hold the hands of these doddering fools, be my guest. I am off to fulfill my responsibilities.”

The others filter away, Igeyorhm included as she shoots them a questioning look. Lahabrea means to follow her, impatiently glancing between Emet-Selch and the elder, and in that time she disappears.

“Young man,” Emet-Selch is not _that_ young a man, nor is he given to waiting on others, but he latches onto Lahabrea’s arm and pulls him back to listen, ignoring the scowl he receives.

Whatever the elder has to say, he will listen; Lahabrea’s impatience and aggression would serve them well enough _after_ they set out. It could only benefit them to have more information to start with.

“As your comrade said, there are many reports of incidents taking place, and I fear there is more to this situation than the Archon realizes…” There’s a moment when the elder looks him in the eyes and he finds himself taken aback, struck by the intensity of his gaze.

Emet-Selch is accustomed to being told he has piercing eyes, a look that strikes individuals to their very souls. He is not accustomed to feeling that he is on the receiving end of such a gaze.

Beside him, Lahabrea shuffles. No longer pulling away, he seems unsettled enough by the elder’s words to _stop_ for a moment and pay attention. “And why do you believe this?”

The elder _smiles._ “’Tis but a feeling. You needn’t heed an old man’s worries, however, but I would suggest you approach any you meet with caution… and the utmost respect. If it is as I fear, aggression and assault will lead you nowhere.”

He can _feel_ Lahabrea readying a derisive retort.

“Your advice has been noted,” He puts it a bit more diplomatically; privately, of course, Lahabrea is right – a theory without evidence is utter nonsense, but the old man is _still_ the only one who can tell them where to go. “We are ourselves scholars, not warriors – our greatest directive is always to learn, and fools would we be to not seize any knowledge we could find about this mysterious phenomenon.”

“For that I am glad,” the man nods sagely – Emet-Selch has to restrain a smirk, “I would suggest, then, seeking further out than your comrades will be going. To the east – a ways away, across most of the valley, at the base of the opposite mountain range, you should find a strange structure. I understand lord Rhalgr is particularly taken with such things, yes?”

Brows raised, he glances over to Lahabrea – who now listens with rapt attention. “Is this connected to any nearby ruins? Any unique architecture or defining features?”

“Your gaze would be more discerning than any secondhand accounts,” the elder appeals to Lahabrea’s admittedly well-founded arrogance, extending a wrinkled hand enclosing a yellowed scrap of paper, “I’ve marked it on this map, if you would.”

Emet-Selch sighs as if put upon. “Yes, we will indeed. Thank you for your time,” an awkward pause, “honored elder.”

A smile twitches on the old man’s lips as they leave. It’s of no consequence; if a pittance of respect is the price to pay for getting the information they need and getting out of there, Emet-Selch considers it a fair bargain indeed.

It's a heavier bargain than he realizes - and the price they all pay will be great indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY YOU GUYS DIDN'T THINK I WAS GOING TO NOT UPDATE THIS FIC, DID YOU? ;) 
> 
> I have the next chapter mostly finished, and a number of subsequent chapters drafted, as well, but I am working on some other stuff so we'll have to see how often they come out XD Rest assured though, there is a plot, and the author absolutely knows where she's going~
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, Please Look Forward to the next update <3

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for a perpetually anonymous friend on the lovely [Book Club Discord!](https://discord.gg/dvCMr3v) If you enjoy fanfiction - reading, writing, or just talking about ideas, please feel free to jump in! Who knows, we might just catch each other when the next exchange comes up ;) 
> 
> In any case, I hope you all enjoyed, and thank you very much for reading! This prompt absolutely ran away from me (brilliant idea on the part of the prompter, it was just so fun to write for) and I have the next few chapters all ready to go - hopefully, the rest will come soon, and not Soon (tm) XD Please Look Forward To It, in any case, and I'll do my best to get it out in something resembling a timely manner~


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